


The Acacia and Azalea Gown

by Kittywitch



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-22
Updated: 2014-02-22
Packaged: 2018-01-13 08:42:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1219840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kittywitch/pseuds/Kittywitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A dress worn by Peri reflects on its life in the BBC wardrobe department... that is to say, the TARDIS wardrobe room.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Acacia and Azalea Gown

The Acacia and Azalea Gown

  


Let me begin with the fact I am a gown. This is not a euphemism of any sort, I am in fact an article of clothing that was designed and created with the intent of making a young woman look appropriately pretty.  
    I was commissioned in 1876 by a doctor whose name I never learned for a young woman named Peri. The two of them created a huge amount of fuss when they entered the shop; they were arguing. I would get used to that.

    There were two girls working in the shop day, and both of them attempted to serve the pair at once, which only really amounted to four people looking between each other very quickly, pointing at swatches and design books and trying to figure out what the other ones were saying. Eventually, a series of decisions were made about my construction. I was to be made of lemon yellow and pink chiffon with silk ribbons and flowers. Off the shoulder with small sleeves and a ruffled train. The young woman was not particularly excited about the train but the man insisted it was extremely fashionable.

    The subject of flowers was discussed loudly, and at length, as both the man and the woman were adamant that they were more informed than the other on the subject of flowers. The woman mentioned that she studied them, and the man insisted that he knew better about just about anything. They fought about this for several minutes, neither of them seemed to particularly care that they were in public or what the other was saying. In the end, they decided that I would feature large, pink azaleas with a froth of acacia trailing down from each cluster.

    It took the two seamstresses two and a half weeks to finish me. They agreed that my design was generally a mistake but they would do what they could for me: keeping the bodice simple and toning down the colors with as much white lace and pearl buttons as would not be distracting.  
    Eventually, one of them looked up the meanings associated with the flowers they had already begun to sew onto me. Acacia, it seemed, referred to concealed love while the azalea had the rather poetic meaning of "take care of yourself for me". They agreed that the flowers had been chosen simply to compliment the colors of my fabric.

    They gossiped as they sewed, Thomas Meagen had been seen crawling about in a neighborhood too good for his kind and some where suggesting that he had a lover in that area, one of Mrs. Godwyn's servants or even one of her own girls, perhaps? That Lucy was a coquette, no doubt, just come out and a bit more free with her favor than perhaps she should be. Would she be titillated by the idea of some unworthy rascal pawing after her affections? But really, it was probably someone downstairs. Lucy Godwyn had plenty of respectable suitors, particularly for a girl of her means; after all, she was pretty enough but hardly that pretty.  
    What ever did become of old Pete after he left the city? Someone said that someone died, but I can't recall if it was his wife or his sister. The way all three of them went about together in the afternoons, it was more than enough to remember which woman was which.  
    What was the relationship of the young woman I was being made for to the man who paid for it? A ward, perhaps, or a young wife? At that time it wasn't thought as strange for someone to have a wife ten or twenty years younger than him, particularly not for someone who is evidently rich enough to simply walk into a good shop in a town they'd never been seen in before and order a dress. The idea she might be a research assistant was raised, after all one of them had said he was a doctor, but why would a doctor not only buy but commission a ball gown to design for a research assistant?

    I was completed in time for the ball, and the brilliant colors were explained: I was designed to make one of the more violently colored ensembles this country had ever seen look slightly less vulgar than it would have otherwise. Somehow, my loud colors managed to compliment those of the suit I spent much of the evening pressed to. Miss Brown and her mysterious Doctor had a similar effect on each other: both loud, constantly clashing and somehow each softened by the other's presence. She rode across the floor on the tops of her gentleman's feet and the both of them giggled quite improperly.

    I took mostly to a closet after that, as is the way of garments, though there were a few more occasions where I was taken out and trailed across unfamiliar floors. Miss Brown was not much used to walking with a train and her Doctor mocked her relentlessly for it, and I think she would have boxed his ears if he hadn't made a point of running away, proving how very right he was about her ability to move in a train. Once I thought she was going to wear me and just took one of the combs with cloth flowers that were made to match me.

    Once I found myself caught up in a bundle on the Doctor's bedroom floor, a purple tweed waistcoat and yellow trousers scattered and tangled in my train. I did not particularly appreciate being left on the floor, nor how roughly I had been unbuttoned.

    Shortly after that, my trips from the wardrobe got less and less frequent. I can't count properly, but I am quite sure it was some years later that a blond girl I did not recognize took me off a hanger and held me to her body in a mirror. In the end she decided not to risk a train and wore a black and red number with feathers in her hair. I thought she looked rather like a dancing girl, but that wasn't really for me to say.

    Some time after that, a petite redhead came through, muttering numbers and years under her breath. She picked me up and laughed, then took me to see a man who seemed to be her husband. His first reaction was simply "No." but after a bit of mock-offense on her part and floundering on his he insisted that she would look lovely no matter what she was wearing, but that I would clash with her hair. She admitted that she was teasing and found something from about my time in cream. I can't say I cared much for that experience, not that she would have filled my bodice anyway.

    A man I did not recognize, a young man with brown hair and a brown coat, found me shortly after that. He regarded me sadly for a few moments, then took my hanger in one hand and my train in another and carried me to another end of the wardrobe. He danced about a bit, swirling me like I had not since I was worn by the woman I was made for, then hung me up beside something I had not seen in years.

    I now hang beside the patchwork coat in a corner of a closet of a wardrobe that has not been explored for some time, and the acacia and the azalea on my train are starting to grow limp, as if they were real flowers and not cut silk, and time has finally let them wilt just a little, and the clashing of a palette that was called a mistake has been just slightly faded by the wearing. And I wait in the dark for the woman called Peri that I was made for.


End file.
